Political information markets and how NOT to listen to Tucker Carlson

Taken together, the articles “An Exploration of the Effects of Negative Political Advertising on Political Decision Making” by Pinkleton, et al. and “High-Conflict Television News and Public Opinion” by Forgette and Morris argue that negativity in political campaigns and media coverage of political events contributes to cynicism, distrust and apathy among the public toward national political systems.  However, new communications technologies hold promise in mitigating negativity in hypermedia political campaigns.  Using Howard’s analysis of political information markets, I argue that aspects of the new communications technologies mitigate negativity, while other aspects exacerbate it.

As new communication technologies democratize and liberalize the market for political information, voters will be able to circumvent negative advertising and high-conflict political infotainment on the Web.  The democratization and liberalization of the market for political information is a result of the low marginal cost of collecting and aggregating political information, whether it is candidates’ positions on issues or voters’ preferences. Now, more individuals and groups can access this new abundance of information.  In addition, greater accessibility to political information breeds greater transparency in the political process and more choice in where to access information.

If, as the authors of the aforementioned articles argue, citizens are adverse to negativity and incivility in both political advertising and news commentary, this newly liberalized market for political information should allow them simply to click away from such negativity. In addition, the indirect-inference public policy polling undertaken by political information firms should discover, through its process of inferring psychographic data by following the actions of individuals in cyberspace, that voters are turned off by negativity. When they show that data to campaigns and political organizations, it may result in fewer negative ads and fewer shows with high-conflict commentary.

On the other hand, Howard’s notion of political redlining, whereby parts of the population are restricted from access to certain kinds of information, represents an anti-democratizing and anti-liberalizing force for political information. As citizens are increasingly pigeon-holed based on information gathered about them without their consent, they will become even more segmented in the public sphere. As these groups become sequestered from other groups, they may become more susceptible to negative advertising and high-conflict commentary. In addition, the process of political redlining may cut off paths for circumventing these negative environments.

In summary, the outlook on how new communications technologies will affect voters’ ability to access political information and circumvent negativity is fuzzy.  As Howard argues forcefully, it is not a matter of the technology inherently supporting or opposing democratization and liberalization; it is a matter of whether the architects of the structures of these technologies build them in such a way to cultivate openness and equal use for everyone. While the architects of our information technology structure have been a relatively small group of people, the exponential increase in usage of these technologies by the public brings these issues into the public and political sphere. By that I mean, citizens have a vested interest in how these structures are erected, and since we live in a democratic society, we are able to advocate for openness and equitability through laws and social norms.

Still, firms are legally gathering and aggregating information about us without our consent and selling it to campaigns and firms who may affect our ability to access political information. It is up to us raise awareness about this issue and move forward to promote openness and equality. Moreover, since these studies have shown that negativity in political advertising and high-conflict commentary contributes to cynicism and apathy, it should be our goal to allow anyone who wants to get involved, but doesn’t want to listen to squeaky Tucker Carlson, to get around his bow tie.